The Frostwalker Friars
The Mendicant Preachers · “Barefoot in the Snow”
The Frostwalker Friars are the great mendicant (begging) order of Frostianity — wandering preachers who own nothing, “walk barefoot in the snow” after the example of the apostles (the first Frostwalkers), and carry the gospel into the warm towns and the roads where settled monks do not go. Where the older orders are enclosed, the Friars are sent.
Life and Mission
Bound by a strict vow of Bareness (radical poverty, holding nothing in common or in private), the Friars live by alms and by the work of their hands, preaching repentance, hearing confession, and serving the urban poor and the pilgrim roads. They were a chief engine of renewal and learning in the later medieval church and of the crusading and missionary ages. Their grey habit and bare feet are a standing rebuke to warm comfort, embodying the works of keeping in motion.